


feel something.

by zoeinthetardis



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-11
Updated: 2013-05-11
Packaged: 2017-12-11 12:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/798875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoeinthetardis/pseuds/zoeinthetardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Once upon a time, he thinks, you got a glimpse at all my terrible, terrible secrets.</p>
<p>...But you stayed anyway."</p>
<p>[whouffle, second-person, claraxeleven]</p>
            </blockquote>





	feel something.

"Tell me a story."

He is good at telling you every star in the night sky, pointing them out and reciting them by name in every single language he knows with a wondrous passion that leaks into your system and stirs the wanderlust you clung to in pages for so very long. Every time you see the milkyway (and all those other billions of constellations that make up trillions of galaxies you have all the time in the world to explore) staring back down at you, you think of him, you think of all those endless, endless names and suddenly you feel oh-so very small.

 

But is he any good at telling stories?

 

\------

 

(You felt this once before - remember?

 

The words whisper through your heartstrings and pull a frightened chord beneath your ribcage.

 

_"We're all ghosts to you."_

 

You must be nothing to him, and he's everything to you.

 

And that, that is the most frightening thought of all.)

 

\------

 

_Once upon a time,_ he thinks, _you got a glimpse at all my terrible, terrible secrets._ The ones buried deep in his hearts and in pages of books you weren't supposed to discover - (or were you? Fate has a funny way of twisting your path in life to stumble upon curious things.) Even the most secret one of all. It filtered through your head and danced on your tongue, and got so very close to spilling out from your lips into the air. You don't remember that, though.

 

But you stayed anyway.

 

\------

 

_Hush,_ you think to yourself. _Listen. Those thoughts are for rainy days._

He tells a story from his childhood. That's got to mean something, right? He wouldn't just spill his deepest memories to anyone, would he?

 

_("We must be nothing. What can we possibly be?")_

 

Droplets fall to the floor, but not from the sky. You wip them away quickly, and he's too lost in his story to notice. You listen - tales of time and children (oh, how you miss them, as funny as it seems) and laughter (you'd missed that too, before he came along) and watch how the elation in his eyes turn darker with recollection of the past. And only then do you both realise how the past is called the past for a reason, and his voice ceases and in that pause you dare to take his hand (gently, so not to cause alarm) and you smile into him with a squeeze.

His touch is like fire against the ice in his heart. Incandescently, agonizingly wonderful.

"Oh, Clara" he whispers, glancing at his soul that looks every single bit of his years. He takes your hand and kisses it softly, with a gentleness that can only come with age ( _"you are beautiful",_ he once whispered to your utter delight - though you knew he didn't mean it like you wished he did.)

 

\------

 

He _did_ mean it like you wished.

 

You don't remember that, though.

 

\------

 

"Tell me a story", you repeat again, "with mystery."

 

_("You are the only mystery worth solving.")_

You - or everyone else?

 

"There's one," he begins, and underneath the stars on some deserted, beautiful planet where the sun never rises and you sleep underneath constellations and spill all the secrets buried in your heart to the galazies, "about how the sun loved the moon so much, he died every night to let her breathe."

_But I **can't** breathe,_ you think. _Teach me gently how to breathe._

 

(This is suffocating.)

 

\------

 

And he teaches you.

This isn't fair - because _you_ are the fiesty one, _you_ are the one who's supposed to lunge out of no-where and grab him by the neck, _you_ are the one who is supposed to catch _him_ off guard. _You_ are the one with all these unrequited emotions you wish he could feel back, everything is tipping and the world has turned backwards but it's ok, somehow, because his gentle hands find your face and you sigh into his lips that are pressing against your face and cheek and nose and eyelids and mouth and he steals you away with his eyes and mouth and everything else in the world and in this moment the entire universe above your heads is irrelevant and all you can think is _oh my stars._ And now he knows all of your terrible secrets that pour from your body and engulf both of your beings as you kiss him back ( _this is madness, this is impossible, we are **impossible**_ ), scared of everything that has happened and everything that will - and as salt splashes against your cheeks he wipes them away with the utmost care that tells you _I am here. I am always here._

And then you breathe.

 

He smiles again. "Oh, Clara."

_Why?_ you want to whisper - this must be a dream. (He told a tale of a dreamlord who infected the minds of people he once travelled with and made them choose between one horror or the other.) Like everything in your life, it must come with a price.

You ran away with a stranger and travel the universe. What is there left to dream about?

"Because _you_ , Clara" he sighs, his forehead pressed to yours as if he could read every thought inside your head. " _You_ are the only mystery worth solving."

 

_You'd reply if you knew how._

\------

He teaches you just that. How.

 

 

 

And, most importantly, _who._

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> fanfiction.net deleted this, boooo! so i thought i'd post it here instead. hope you liked it!


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